More about The Virgin of the Rocks

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Sr. Contributor

Tied for the holiest playdate in the history of the universe.

There are other depictions of the sacrosanct hangouts between these godly cousins, but this one wins by a wide margin for chunkiest babies. On the right, throwing up gang signs in the arms of an angel, sits easily one of the top ten chubbiest depictions ever composed of our little savior Christ. John the Baptist is on the left, using a pimp stick gerrymandered into the painting so that there's no chance anyone could leave confused about which tyke is going to make Mel Gibson a billionaire. 

Two iterations of Virgins of the Rocks exist, this being the copy and the original hanging in the Louvre. This whole business started when the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception commissioned Leo for an altarpiece to spruce up their church in Milan. Assessing he'd given them a job well done, our favorite Renaissance man wasn't going to accept second rate pay for A+ work. Leonardo advised the confraternity to pay him what they really owed him, and they balked. King Louis XII of France had a solution, though, offering to pay Leonardo what he wanted and intervening with the confraternity to renegotiate for a new painting at a fairer price. It's practically the first rule of business: If you realize after the fact that you made a mistake during the negotiation process, get some muscle on your side to threaten the other party, break the contract, and act like it never existed.

Real talk though: this work is one expert's opinion away from being downgraded from "by Leonardo" to by "Leonardo." Compared to the one in the Louvre, this artwork's flora and geology game is way off base. Leonardo's entire worldview was focused on merging art and nature. The goal for every blasted one of his paintings was to innovate such that the scene could be happening in a place at a time. That could totally happen with the Louvre OG painting. The surface of the rocks are rendered such that you can see what's sandstone and what's...not sandstone, I guess. All the flowers are realistic to the point that they grow from the right nooks and crannies that would, in real life, offer a home to that particular kind of plant. The attention to detail is mind boggling. 

The National Gallery version has flowers that may as well have been drawn on the cover of a home printed science fiction novel, growing out of rocks that wouldn't host life to boot. It's like topsy-turvy town compared to what Leonardo would have normally done, because brother half-assed nothing. This guy made up a plan for a workable gyrocopter in his spare time. He's not going to do something that's against his psychological POV while on the clock. Or, maybe he would. Weirder things have happened. Either way, the National Gallery clings to the Leo attribution for dear life because there's only a couple dozen finished paintings from his hand in existence. Discovering a lost one is a one way ticket to fame n' fortune. Being the person that lost your museum attribution for a Leonardo is probably what happens right before you're invited to hand in a resignation.